Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!lethe!yunexus!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!samsung!think.com!paperboy!meissner From: meissner@osf.org (Michael Meissner) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: 64 bit longs? Message-ID: Date: 14 Jan 91 20:50:55 GMT References: <2567@casbah.acns.nwu.edu> <1991Jan13.220958.16568@zoo.toronto.edu> Sender: news@OSF.ORG Organization: Open Software Foundation Lines: 24 In-reply-to: henry@zoo.toronto.edu's message of 13 Jan 91 22:09:58 GMT In article <1991Jan13.220958.16568@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: | In article <2567@casbah.acns.nwu.edu> hpa@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Peter Anvin) writes: | >Does anyone know if this configuration is supported (presumably on 32-bit | >machines): | >char = 8 bits | >short = 16 bits | >int = 32 bits | >long = 64 bits | | It is intuitively appealing, but I would be surprised to see anyone | implementing it: it would break far too much badly-written software. I seem to recall that the first version of the Elxsi compilers had this, but they soon changed long back to 32 bits, using long long as the 64 bit int. The reason I always heard was the difficulty of porting the BSD networking code. With respect to Elxsi, this is of course academic, since I believe they went belly up. -- Michael Meissner email: meissner@osf.org phone: 617-621-8861 Open Software Foundation, 11 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA, 02142 Considering the flames and intolerance, shouldn't USENET be spelled ABUSENET?